Food 31 -- Food-related items on desk

Yay, today is the last day of this month's NaBloPoMo! Sheesh, 31 posts with one per day is an awful lot and although the theme of food initially sounded like a piece of cake (mwahahaha -- pun intended!), I have struggled with posting interesting new things recently.

So, for my last food-themed post for this month, I thought I would list the items surrounding me while I work at my desk that are food-themed. I actually have quite a few:

- Creme puff eraser
- Strawberry cake eraser
- Shrimp tempura over rice eraser
- Dorayaki eraser
- Doraemon (eating dorayaki) toy
- Root beer flavored chapstick
- Gingerbread scented lotion
- Mr. Sushi rice stickers (he is a little rice-shaped character)
- Felt: pretzel, pancakes, pizza, strawberry, corn, ebi sushi

Thanks for reading all my posts this month -- it's been really fun writing them! I won't be able to keep up the daily posting next month since I will be on vacation for 10 days in Cartagena, but I will write posts before and after that trip. (Yay, Carlos and I will be there in 1 week!)

Food 30 -- Comida tipica

Again, I couldn't think of a NaBloPoMo food topic, but Carlos gave me the idea of talking about the kinds of food that I normally eat here for lunch or that ticos in general eat -- some of the comida tipica ("typical food") of Costa Rica.

Costa Rican food is bland. They don't usually use spices in anything and there are no food items that really stand out as "Costa Rican." Two staples of every meal here are rice and beans (both with no added spices/flavorings). A very Costa Rican breakfast consists of gallo pinto -- black beans mixed up with rice and some onions and peppers. This can be topped with natilla (sour cream). I used to really like gallo pinto, but now I don't ever eat it. That's actually how I am now with all beans -- I have reached my lifetime bean intake limit (with the exception of jelly beans of course!).

One lunch that I really like is platano con queso -- a ripe cooked plantain slit along the top with melted cheese inside. It might sound weird, but it's really good. Usually with this lunch, they serve a pati -- kind of like an empanada (if you know what that is...). Think of a small, fried crescent-shaped roll filled with cheese or meat. I really like them!

One typical food item eaten during holidays is the tamal -- corn mush with vegetables and meat tied up in a banana leaf and boiled until cooked. These are absolutely everywhere during Christmas-time. I also saw a program on TV once where some ticos were trying to break the world record for making the longest tamal!

Costa Rica doesn't have the type of varied delicious cuisine that countries like Peru or Mexico have. Most meals consist of rice, beans, meat, and a vegetable. They almost never have tortillas incorporated into meals here -- boo, I love tortillas!

Food 29 -- Yellow curry

As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite dinners to prepare is curry (Thai-style). It is really easy to make, quick, and delicious. A few nights ago, we had yellow curry with chicken, potatoes, and onion. All it takes to make this is the curry paste stir-fried with coconut milk then put all the vegetables in until the potatoes are all cooked and that's it! We had boiled chicken left over from a previous dinner so we just chucked that into the cooked curry and placed it over some rice.

I like the yellow curry (we also have green and Panang curries), but my favorite Thai-style curry is definitely Massaman (which we recently ran out of). I think I like the sweetness and more mild flavor of the Massaman -- especially with avocado and potato!

Food 28 -- Guavas

'Tis the season for guavas now (there are actually a couple of times a year when the guava trees are really fruiting) and I love them! Carlos and I gathered a few from a big tree, took them home, and made guava juice to drink with dinner the other night.

All of the animals around here love them -- even some of the frugivorous fish (called machacas). If you throw a guava off the bridge, they swarm around it and sometimes even jump out of the water to get it! It is quite the sight to see -- hey, they don't call them fruit piranhas for nothing!

Food 27 -- Felt corn

The night before last, while relaxing and watching some episodes of The Simpsons, I felt like making a felt craft. I couldn’t decide what to make until I saw the curtains in the Simpsons’ kitchen -- they have little ears of corn on them and I thought that would be a fun felt item to make that also ties in with my NaBloPoMo food posts.
So...I made an ear of corn, but I didn’t have any green embroidery floss to sew the edges and it looks a little weird. Overall it’s OK, but sheesh, I am really not on a roll with these little felt pieces!

Food 26 -- Ice cream cake

A couple of days ago, I had an ice cream after lunch. Here at La Selva, we are super lucky that they sell a nice selection of ice cream treats in the gift shop! This is probably one of the few field stations in the world where researchers can buy ice cream after coming back from a hard day in the field.


One of my favorite ice cream treats to get is the vanilla ice cream cake. It is supposed to resemble a rolled vanilla sponge cake filled with vanilla ice cream. Although the cake doesn’t closely resemble the picture on the box, it is really good and very full of vanilla flavor. One food that Costa Rica can really do well is ice cream. Treats from Dos Pinos (a big dairy company here) are pretty cheap and really tasty!

Food 25 -- Cartagena foods

I have only 13 more days until I go to Cartagena, Colombia! I am really excited and have spent a bit of my free time doing research on the things that I would like to see and do there (I love researching my travels!). Carlos and I will be there for 10 days (woo-hoo a REAL vacation!) and we will have plenty of time to see everything that Cartagena and its surroundings have to offer.

Keeping with the food theme of this month's posts, here are some foods that I would like to eat in Cartagena:

- Arepa con queso (flattened cooked sweet corn cake filled with cheese)
- Crepes and waffles (at the logically-named restaurant chain Crepes & Waffles. According to Carlos, they also have really good ice cream sundaes.)
- Fondue (there are a surprising number of French restaurants there...)
- Tapas (...also a lot of Spanish restaurants)
- Pizza
- Baked goods (French and German-owned bakeries -- there are a lot of European expats in Cartagena!)
- Ice cream (it's very hot there, so this will likely be a daily requirement...mwahahaha!)
- Colombian hot chocolate

I can't wait for our vacation!

Food 24 -- Agua de Jamaica

Last night I whipped up a batch of agua de Jamaica and here is a picture of the final result:

It was really hard to take a picture that showed how deep red the juice is -- most of my pictures ended up looking like a mere glass of Coke! Anyway, it was really delicious. Carlos and I drank the agua de Jamaica with our dinner -- bacon, avocado, and tomato sandwiches. That was the first time I've ever had bacon here in Costa Rica. For some reason it is really rare and hard to find.

Food 23 -- Hibiscus petals

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I bought some Hibiscus (known as Jamaica here, remember that the J sounds like an H) petals to make agua de Jamaica. I really like this drink. Basically, I boil a lot of water in a pot, once it's boiling, I throw a lot of Jamaica petals in, let them steep for a long time, add some sugar (while the water is still hot so that it melts quickly), then drain the petals from the drink. Voila -- a delicious and beautiful bright burgundy juice! The taste is something like a sweet, tart (almost raspberry) tea. It is kind of hard to describe if you've never had it. Here are some pictures of the little bag of Hibiscus petals (50 g) and some dried petals:


I will try to remember to take some pictures of the actual agua de Jamaica when we make it.

Food 22 -- San Jose foods

Today Carlos and I were in San Jose in order to get him re-vaccinated against yellow fever (since this vaccine expires after 10 years). We both need current certification of yellow fever vaccination in order to re-enter Costa Rica from Colombia (since Colombia is an endemic yellow fever area). Everything went surprisingly smooth and we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and seeing a movie (our favorite thing to do in San Jose!).

As for the food theme today, I ate some McDonalds (yes, bad, but it tastes really good here and was the best cheeseburger I've had for a while!) and I also had a blueberry frozen yoghurt. Since we were near the grocery store, I picked up a couple of snacks: dried Hibiscus petals (for agua de Jamaica juice), gummy bears, chai, and little twist pretzels. One of my favorite snacks is little twist pretzels and ice water. Yea, that sounds really boring but the dry, salty pretzels match really well with cold water! I guess it's pretty healthy! Oh yea, I also like to eat pretzels with cheddar cheese...so much for healthy I guess...

PS. As for the movie -- we saw Batman: The Dark Knight. It was awesome! Heath Ledger's performance was really crazy/scary/interesting and I think this is, so far, my favorite movie of the summer. I know that the X-Files movie comes out soon so maybe I will get to see it while in San Jose (again) the day before our flight to Colombia! This summer has a lot of big movies!

Food 21 -- Favorite drinks

I was thinking of more food-related topics to blog about and this one just popped into my head: my favorite drinkable things!

- Almond cream bubble tea
- Green tea cream bubble tea
- Maracuya (passion fruit) juice
- Colombian style hot chocolate
- Apple cider
- Flavored and spicy black tea
- Chai
- Skim milk
- Super-cold limeade
- Root beer
- Cream soda
- Sarsaparilla (my favorite soda!)
(UPDATE: I just randomly thought of another one)
- Thai iced tea

There are probably more things that I like to drink, but that's all that I could think of right now. Yum, now I am thirsty!

Food 20 -- Favorite Disney foods

Last night's dinner party was a great success -- we had a really fun time eating tasty quesadillas with lots of onions, tomatoes, and avocados. I didn't take any pictures (I was too wrapped up in chatting and eating to remember), but that's OK -- I had a nice time!

My mom has provided the subject for today's blog post. I have been having some trouble thinking of new food-themed blog post ideas so I definitely welcome any ideas any of you guys out there have for me! Today I will make a list of some of my favorite snacks at Disney theme parks! I love going to Disneyland and Disney World -- lots of fun and nostalgia. Here are the best snacks (in my opinion) from the parks:

- Churro
- Dole Whip
- Giant dill pickle from Tom Sawyer's Island (unfortunately, they don't sell these pickles any more!)
- Soft pretzel
- Mickey head-shaped lollipops
- Turkey leg (Carlos really liked this one)
- Any food from the World Pavillion at EPCOT!
(Update: I forgot to add these necessities:)
- Fritter and mint julep from New Orleans Square

Food 19 -- Quesadillas

Tonight Carlos and I are going to have a little dinner get-together at the house with a couple of friends. We are going to make quesadillas and maracuya juice -- I LOVE quesadillas! We just went to town this morning and stocked up on food for the rest of the time that we will be here before we head off to Cartagena (about 3 weeks). We have lots of food at home now and tonight will be a really nice night with good food and friends! Maybe I will take some pictures of the food from tonight so that I can post it tomorrow~

Food 18 -- Suicide food

Have you ever heard of the term "suicide food?" This refers to animals depicted as food mascots that want to be eaten -- e.g. Charlie tuna, or a TON of barbecue-related foods showing pigs gleefully bathing in BBQ sauce. Weird, but pretty entertaining. I was going through some of my photos to try and find an idea to blog about and I found a picture that I took in Fortuna last Christmas.

It shows a little fried chicken drumstick touting how fresh and juicy he and his friends are -- so you should go over to As Oros and eat some. Straaange! (but I think the little drumstick is pretty cute -- although suicidal!)

Food 17 -- Fictional foods

Fictional foods that I would like to eat:

• Lembas bread (Lord of the Rings)
• Romulan Ale (Star Trek)
• Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Licorice Wands, Butterbeer (Harry Potter)
• Gummi berry juice (The Gummi Bears)
• Wonka Bar, Fizzy Lifting Drink, Snozzberries (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
• Scooby Snacks (Scooby Doo)

Food 16 -- Spaghetti

I am half-way through NaBloPoMo for this month and it is starting to get a little more difficult to think of blog post subjects. Soooo…for dinner last night I had spaghetti! Hehehe, not too exciting but it was really good and really hit the spot. To make it, I sautéed a lot of onions, then cooked the ground beef, let it all simmer together in sauce, and mixed it in with the cooked spaghetti. Easy! The good thing is that we made a lot, so we are having leftover spaghetti for dinner tonight. I think that day-old spaghetti is even better than fresh spaghetti!

One thing that Carlos and I really have to watch out for here, with regard to pasta, are weevils. These little beetles are really good at burrowing through packages and infesting pasta of all kinds. When we go to the grocery store, we thoroughly inspect every package of pasta for weevil holes before we buy it. Gross. Once, we were really hungry and making pasta. I dumped the noodles into the boiling water and there were a couple of small black beetles that floated to the top. I was so hungry that if we scooped them out, I would still eat it. After that, lots of little white specks started floating to the surface -- these were all the eggs and larvae that the beetles had produced inside the bag. Needless to say, we dumped all of that pasta -- eeeeeeew!

Food 15 -- In-N-Out

I was looking through my large moleskine sketchbook last night and happened upon a food-related drawing I had done. It is a colored pencil sketch of a double-double cheeseburger from the West Coast burger chain In-N-Out.

I love this fast-food place! The food is inexpensive and the cheeseburgers are fresh and tasty. I have never ordered a double double however. I’ve only ever eaten In-N-Out grilled cheeses (a cheeseburger sans meat) since I was vegetarian during the only times I’ve been there. I can’t wait to eat a cheeseburger (since I’m not a vegetarian anymore) with fries when I travel through California this upcoming winter as I take my road trip across the states. They don’t have anything as good as In-N-Out here in Costa Rica (or in Florida for that matter). The West Coast is the best coast as they say!

Food 14 -- Paris snacks

A couple of nights ago I was in the mood for some more drawing and I drew a bunch of snacks that I would like to eat whenever I am in Paris again.

Now I am really hungry and want a baguette and a chocolat chaud!

Food 13 -- Leftovers

Last night Carlos and I had leftover patoux chinois and tomato salad for dinner. Here is a picture.

This was a really nice and fast dinner -- I love leftovers. I think I also ate a whole beefsteak tomato -- I love tomatoes!

Food 12 -- Patoux chinois

Last night for dinner, I made patoux chinois (I am not even sure if that's how to spell it -- it's pronounced "pahtoo sheenwah"). This is something that we've always eaten in my family and it is delicious! Patoux is super-easy to make and consists of mashed potatoes mixed with sweet canned corn and cooked ground beef. We also put a little Lawry's seasoning on this and it is great! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at home with me, but we are having leftovers tonight so maybe I can take my camera home to take some pictures. I always think of family dinners when I eat this and I am pretty sure not a lot of people have heard of this concoction before. Does anyone else have interesting family dishes that always remind them of home?

Food 11 -- Meme

My fellow blogging friend tagged me to answer the following meme and since it is semi-food related, I thought it would work for today's post!

What was I doing ten years ago?
In the summer of 1998, I had just finished my favorite and most challenging year of high school (junior year) at Eastlake. I was probably excited about passing all of my AP tests (I took 3 that year and received grades of 4’s or 5’s on all of them) -- free college credit! I was also probably thinking about what college I would go to after the next year.

What are five (non-work) things on my to-do list for today:
1. Work on the logo for the 2010 Frugivory and Seed Dispersal conference
2. Contact hotels in Cartagena
3. NaBloPoMo post on Rowdy Mouse
4. Make dinner
5. Continue writing dissertation (OK, that’s technically work...but I can’t think of anything else that isn’t work-related!)

Five Snacks I Enjoy:
1. Cheese and baguette
2. Dill pickles
3. Triscuits with tuna and relish
4. Pretzels
5. Jelly Belly jelly beans

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. Travel EVERYWHERE!
2. Figure out a permanent place to live and build my dream house (with a gigantic library/office)
3. Buy tons of rain forest land (in New and Old World tropics) and start a huge animal reserve
4. Buy new houses for my parents and sister too

Places I have lived:
1. Fountain Valley, CA
2. Anchorage, AK
3. Redmond, WA
4. Isla Vista (Goleta), CA
5. Miami, FL
6. Puerto Viejo Sarapiqui, Costa Rica

Jobs I have had:
1. Retail worker/cashier, Mervyn’s
2. Zoo Ambassador (guide), Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle
3. Animal Care Aide, Santa Barbara Zoo
4. Assistant curator at the Museum of Systematics (Botany collection) at UC -- Santa Barbara
5. Teaching assistant (Introductory Biology labs) at the University of Miami
6. Research assistant on Everglades and Canaveral National Seashore small mammal trapping projects
7. Graduate student (currently), University of Miami

People who should post this:
Since I only know one other person who has a blog (and she tagged me!), anyone with a blog who is reading this can consider themselves tagged!

Food 10 -- Japan snacks

I like Japanese food and I LOVE Japanese snacks (one of the stores that my sister and I always visit when we go home to visit our parents in Washington is Uwajimaya -- possibly the best Asian market EVER!). I drew a sketch of some Japanese snacks that I would like to try (click on the picture and you will see it bigger in a new page):
Strong Tomato Pretz (pretzel-like sticks with a strong tomato flavor)
March of Koala -- Honey Pancake (little koala-shaped cookies with a honey pancake taste)
Rich Toppo -- Green Tea Cheesecake (thin cookie tubes filled with green tea cheesecake)
Kabaya Watermelon Candy (hard candies that taste like watermelon and look like pink and yellow watermelons)
Lotte Toppo -- Vanilla & Salt (thin cookie tubes filled with salty vanilla flavor)
Glico Cheesecake Collon (I love Collon cookies! I have only tried vanilla but I think cheesecake will be even better.)
Lotte Blueberry Gum
Green Pea Pretz (pretzel-like sticks with the flavor of green peas)
Rich Toppo -- Black Sesame Pudding (thin cookie tubes filled with black sesame pudding)
Pocky Men's (Dark chocolate pocky -- why are they called "Men's"?)
Meltykiss Green Tea (Green tea flavored soft chocolates)
Pucca Chocolate -- Creamy Vanilla (Chocolate-covered fish-shaped cookies filled with vanilla cream)

YUM! I can't wait to go to Uwajimaya now!

Food 9 -- Pejibayes

Yesterday, our neighbors gave Carlos and me a bowl of recently-boiled pejibayes. These are fruits of the palm Bactris gasipaes (agoutis and peccaries love them!) and are only edible (for humans) after boiling. People here eat them with mayonnaise.


I've had a couple of pejibayes, but I really don't like them. They are really nutty and very very dry and fibrous. Carlos likes them, but attributes this to the fact that they were a special, rare treat when he worked in a remote forest in Colombia. I guess if I only ate rice for days and days, I would get to like pejibayes too!

The B. gasipaes are tall palms with spiny trunks. I've recently seen a lot of birds feeding on the unripe fruits up in the trees and sometimes they knock fruits on the ground where the peccaries come to gobble them up.

Food 8 -- Felt strawberry

Last night our refrigerator died. There was a big puddle on the floor and Carlos noticed that it wasn't actually cold inside. Our landlord (and his son and HIS son too) came over to investigate the problem and said basically "yup, it isn't working." Hmmm. That was sudden! We gave some of our perishables to them for safekeeping in their fridge until we could get ours working again.

Meanwhile, I made a little felt strawberry last night while watching one of the best TV shows ever: Firefly. I don't really like this felt strawberry though so I don't think I will make it again. It does look like a strawberry right?
In other news, this morning we opened the fridge and it is working again! Weird? Our landlord is still going to take a look at it to figure out what's going on -- I feel that our little brown fridge isn't going to last much longer...

Food 7 -- Iron Chef

Iron chef is one of my favorite food-themed shows of all time (the original, Japanese show, NOT the American version). I watched this whenever I could back in high school or college on the Food Network. The premise is unique and interesting: a challenger, while competing against a chosen Iron Chef, cooks as many delicious dishes as he/she can in 1 hour involving a theme ingredient. Whoever makes dishes that best capture the taste of the theme ingredient wins! Usually, the final dishes aren’t things that I would particularly love to eat, but sometimes the chefs do make foods that I would try. Usually the theme ingredients don’t sound very appetizing to me (e.g. natto -- fermented soybeans), but sometimes the ingredient sounds delicious (e.g. strawberries, lobster, potato).

I especially like the actor who portrays Chairman Kaga in the program. Kaga is supposed to be an eccentric gourmand and he loves to eat yellow peppers. I also like the enthusiastic commentators and instant re-plays that happen during all the cooking action.

Allez cuisine!

Food 6 -- (200th post!) Baked treats

Hey, I've made it to post 200 -- Wow, that's a lot of posts! I hope I can keep this little bloggie going for at least 200 more.

Back to food.

I am not much of a chef (my sister inherited all the chef genes), but sometimes I do like to bake. However, since I have no oven at home and the only oven I have access to doesn’t heat evenly and takes HOURS to get even remotely hot, I never bake anything here in Costa Rica. When I return to the US (and an oven), I plan on baking up some treats so I have bookmarked a few recipes that I’ve randomly encountered online. Here are a few that I really want to try:

• Pumpkin roll (This is the only recipe I’ve made before -- one of my favorite cakes!)
• Green tea cheese cake (I really love green tea anything!)
• Eggnog pound cake
• Marble molasses pound cake
• Gingerbread

Food 5 -- Fried ants

I want to warn that this post might be a little hard to stomach for some people. It involves insects as food. If you think this is gross -- turn back now!

Okay, yesterday Carlos and I heard about a massive emergence of Atta ant (leaf-cutting ant) queens. This is a fairly rare event involving hundreds of huge (~ 2.5 cm long) reproductive queens venturing out to found new colonies.
Apparently, these ants are fried up and revered as a tasty treat in a small region of Colombia so we collected a bunch and brought them home to try. First, we removed the wings, then cooked them up in a large, very hot pot until the ants were crispy.
I tried 2 ants and they weren't that bad. They really didn't taste like much: basically crunchy burnt popcorn seeds is the closest I can describe them as. We brought our cooked ants to a dinner party last night and a bunch of people tried them...with mixed reactions.
I don't mind eating these, but in my opinion, they were a lot of work for only a little payoff. I would rather cook up popcorn or eat some sour cream and onion Pringles than chomp on more ant queens!

PS. These ants have also been covered in chocolate and sold in fancy department stores throughout Europe. Would you try them?

Food 4 -- Chicken salad sandwiches

Happy Fourth of July to all of my USA compatriots!

Anyway, last night I had a really delicious dinner and, since I remembered to bring my camera home (I rarely do), I took pictures. Carlos and I made chicken salad sandwiches, but the best part of these sandwiches isn’t the chicken -- it’s the accompanying fixings!


We had some baguette-like bread saved so we used that instead of the plain white Bimbo brand (yup, that’s the brand of the bread here). First, we boiled some chicken, shredded it, and added a little mayonnaise. I sliced up onions, tomatoes, and (the best part) avocado for our sandwiches. I also added some sliced cheddar cheese to mine.


Once everything was ready, I piled everything together and voila -- delicious sandwich!

Food 3 -- Food combos

Unique (but delicious to me) food combinations:
• Toasted wheat bread with mayonnaise.
• Toasted sourdough bread with feta spread and chopped onions.
• Dill pickle wrapped in alternating layers of sliced salami and cream cheese.
• Dill pickle and cheddar or goat cheese.
• Mexican-style hot chocolate with pieces of Havarti or Gouda cheese stirred in (this is a Colombian favorite).
Obviously, none of these are good for you, but they are nice treats that I only get to eat very rarely.

Food 2 -- Cheese

Living in Costa Rica, there are certain foods that are very rare or downright impossible to find. I really don’t mind this, but sometimes I would like to have a treat and a little taste of something different.

The food item that I miss the most is probably cheese. There IS cheese here, but there are only three vague varieties to find easily: cheddar (my favorite of the bunch), “gouda”(really a bland hard white cheese that is not gouda at all), and queso Turrialba -- also known as squeaky cheese. Queso Turrialba is a really tasteless wet, slimy cheese that squeaks against your teeth when you chomp on it. Meh, not my favorite. I really miss goat cheese, feta, ricotta, Dubliner, and many more cheeses (I think cheese may be my favorite food), but I don’t mind not having them now because I know I will be able to eat them once I get back to the states. However, what Costa Rica lacks in delicious cheese, it makes up for in many more ways!

Food 1 -- Macarons

Today is the first day of July ... that means this is my first entry for NaBloPoMo for July (with the theme of food) -- I almost forgot!

Yesterday, I woke up with a very strong craving for a cookie. Unfortunately I don't have any cookies and we won't be going to town for a few days. The reason I really wanted a cookie was because I had a dream that I was in France wandering around and eating a very fancy type of cookie -- the French macaron (not to be confused with the American-style macaroon made with coconut). I have never eaten a macaron, but I am sure that I would like them. Macarons are made with almonds, egg whites, and sugar. The cookie is comprised of two crispy, but delicate halves that sandwich a layer of sweet filling (a ganache). Macarons come in many, many intersting flavors (e.g. almond, chocolate, anise, lemon, caramel, pistachio, lychee, raspberry, vanilla ... there are to many to list!). One day, I will eat a macaron -- maybe in Paris!
(image courtesy of Laduree)